Bottom line: all white carbs are horrible. Complex foods are best. Corn syrup is used by researchers to CREATE diabetic animals to study: give an animal corn syrup for a few days to weeks and it becomes diabetic. I had friends who worked at Bayer and Iams and they did it all the time. Avoid at all costs!! No refined sugars if you can help it- Stevia soda, stevia in coffee, stevia to cook. NO FAKE SWEETENERS: splenda, equal, etc. are very unhealthy for a plethora of reasons. Agave and honey are good.
Grains, in general, are fine, if whole. Quinoa instead of rice. Whole grain breads, or avoid, if possible. COMPLEX carbs are best.
The rule of the plate: protein the size of your palm in 1/3 of the plate. This can be meat, beans, etc. WHOLE, COMPLEX CARBS, preferably vegetables with low or no sugar content in the other 2/3 of the plate. Lots of leafy greens.
Makes a huge difference.
PRIMARY RULE: Eat some sort of combo food, containing protein, every 2-2 1/2 hours. Our favorite is a hard-boiled egg with the yolk popped out and filled with hummus. Roasted red pepper hummus is my fave. This is an energy bomb and gives you a great pick-me-up in the afternoon with lasting energy from the protein. Stops cravings. Cheap and portable! This keeps your blood sugar on an even keel so you don't have swings. If you eat refined sugars or white foods (rice, potatoes, breads) your body has a hard time pinpointing how much insulin to release to manage the sugars. It releases too much with those foods and you end up with extra insulin in the blood which makes you crave food, even if you're full, then your liver has to release its own sugar to clean up the mess (glycogen) and you have a vicious circle. Insulin is an aging hormone. It does damage when you have too much in the bloodstream. Having swings increases your lifetime risk of strokes and cardiovascular disease, and it's no coincidence these are the 2 main causes of death of diabetics.
Bottom line: if we all ate like the food comes from nature, we'd be far better off. I have learned to avoid things with more than 5 ingredients on the label and try to eat fresh and from my own production, my friends' production, or from the produce department! We also eat gluten-free, and that makes a huge difference. It's difficult, but being sick is pretty difficult, too!
I had one of those moments last week. A car drove down the road outside where I have my breeding facility REALLY fast, like 70, on gravel. Just ridiculous for so many reasons, but there are kids in the area, dogs, guineas, and a HUGE stable with tons of horses whose riders often walk that road, and they could have been just over a crest of one of the hills. I was HOT!!
So I waited for them to come back, as it's a dead end, and I stood out there waving my arms like I'd escaped a rapist. It took the lady a LONG time to stop, skidding as she did (I was shocked to find it was a 50-something normal-looking lady!) and I said, "Did you see how long it took you to stop??" and she immediately knew she was busted and yelled, "Do you CARE??" and hit the gas, nearly running over my foot. Of course on gravel, hitting the gas leaves you sitting still, so I had the opportunity to yell, "There are CHILDREN!!" with my arms up in the air, like a madwoman...a bit like a John Brown moment. Not a thoughtful thing to shout, but pertinent.
I'm going to get a couple of toys and a trike or something to leave in the area so folks are more thoughtful about the way they drive.
Needless to say, when I saw this, I went out and helped them out. However, I thought it was funny and worthy of being shared:
